Features
Features January/February 2025
Top 10 Discoveries of 2024
ARCHAEOLOGY magazine reveals the year’s most exciting finds
RECENT Features
Features January/February 2025
Dancing Days of the Maya
In the mountains of Guatemala, murals depict elaborate performances combining Catholic and Indigenous traditions
Features November/December 2024
Let the Games Begin
How gladiators in ancient Anatolia lived to entertain the masses
Features November/December 2024
The Many Faces of the Kingdom of Shu
Thousands of fantastical bronzes are beginning to reveal the secrets of a legendary Chinese dynasty
Features September/October 2024
Ancient DNA Revolution
How the rapidly evolving field of archaeogenetics is unlocking secrets of the past
MORE Features
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Features January 1, 2011
Cave of the Swimmers - Egypt
The Neolithic rock art at the Cave of the Swimmers, made popular by the 1996 film The English Patient, is being admired to death by tourists who feel compelled to touch the 10,000-year-old paintings.
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Features January 1, 2011
Nondestructive Radiocarbon Dating - College Station, Texas
Precisely dating archaeological artifacts is not as easy or harmless as it might seem. The most common method, radiocarbon dating, requires that a piece of an organic object be destroyed—washed with a strong acid and base at high temperature to remove impurities, and then set aflame.
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Features January 1, 2011
Early Pyramids - Jaen, Peru
Peru's towering burial mounds, with their underground chambers and layers upon layers of history, had long been thought to be a distinctive feature of the country's arid coast.
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Features January 1, 2011
Royal Tomb - El Zotz, Guatemala
A deep looters' trench led archaeologists to a series of amazing, macabre finds beneath the El Diablo pyramid at the modest Maya city of El Zotz.
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Features January 1, 2011
Decoding the Neanderthal Genome - Leipzig, Germany
This past year will always be remembered as the year we found out that the Neanderthals survived and they are us.
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Features January 1, 2011
"Kadanuumuu" - Woranso-Mille, Ethiopia
For the last 35 years, the short-legged “Lucy” skeleton has led some scientists to argue that Australopithecus afarensis didn’t stand fully upright or walk like modern humans, and instead got around by “knuckle-walking” like apes. Now, the discovery of a 3.6-million-year-old beanpole on the Ethiopian plains—christened “Kadanuumuu,” or “Big Man” in the Afar language—puts that tired debate to rest. The new fossil demonstrates these early human ancestors were fully bipedal.
